NEW DELHI: India’s fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim entered the Indian team’s dressing room and offered the players cars if they beat Pakistan in the final of a multi-nation Sharjah tournament in 1986, Press Trust of India said on Monday. It quoted former Indian skipper Dilip Vengsarkar as making the “startling revelation”.

Vengsarkar claimed that Dawood had walked into the team’s dressing room a day before the match and offered each player a Toyota car if they beat Pakistan and won the Austral-Asia Cup in Sharjah. Dawood would often be seen waving the Indian national flag from the VIP lounge in the pavilion where he had a special enclosure before he fell from grace with his Indian patrons.

Pakistan and India qualified for the finals of the tournament, easing out Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Australia on the way. Pakistan then went on to win the match by a wicket when Javed Miandad hit Indian medium pacer Chetan Sharma for a memorable last-ball six.

For all his support to the Indian team though Dawood Ibrahim subsequently married his daughter to Javed Miandad’s son and thus became related to the man who single-handedly thwarted his wager.

Pakistan routinely denies Indian charges that it shelters Dawood Ibrahim ever since the don became a fugitive for his alleged role in the serial bomb blasts that hit Mumbai in 1993 in apparent retaliation for the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992.